Page 173 of the magazine features a full-page photograph of Joseph G.
Butler, Jr., captioned as follows: “An Acquaintance of Every President Since
Lincoln’s Time. Colonel Joseph G. Butler, Jr., of Ohio, has had the privilege
of knowing every President of the United States since Lincoln. He was the
boyhood friend of President McKinley, and is in charge of the splendid Memorial
Building to be erected at Niles, Ohio.”

Document

Affairs at Washington [excerpt]

IT is fitting and appropriate that a boyhood chum and playmate of William
McKinley should inaugurate and take a prominent part in promoting the erection
of a memorial building at Niles, Ohio, the birthplace of the beloved and martyred
president. Colonel Joseph G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown, Ohio, has for many
years been a prominent figure in the business world, and has had the rare privilege
and honor of knowing every president from Lincoln’s time down.
When I met him in Washington recently—after he
had had a chat with President Wilson, his tribute to the successive presidents
in their order was eloquent and terse. Colonel Butler knows how to concentrate
ideas, and his one great purpose now is to complete the work of the McKinley
Birthplace Memorial in the little city of Niles, Ohio, including a museum wherein
the contemporaries of President McKinley can find relics and mementos associated
with the career of the Ohio soldier boy, later leader in Congress and [172][174]
President of the United States. The more the events of the past twenty years
are studied, the more important appear the successive events culminating during
the administration of William McKinley. His kindly, sympathetic and noble personality
will always remain an ideal inspiration to American youth, and leave its impress
upon the centuries.
Colonel J. G. Butler has already secured one hundred
thousand dollars, one half of the amount necessary, and the town of Niles has
donated a park for the site of the new building, and agreed to care perpetually
for this memorial, which will also include a hall and building to be used as
President McKinley would have wished them to be, for practical and social purposes.